1: An amazing collection of essays from leading researchers
This book is intended to introduce the field of Computer Science to
"the scientific community at large, policymakers, and the general
republic." (Preface) The book consists of an amazing collections of
essays from leading researchers in the sub-fields of Computer Science.
You'll have Jon Kleinberg and Christos Papadimitriou on computability
and complexity, Jim Gray on database, Michael Lesk on information
retrieval, Tom Mitchell on machine learning, Lillian Lee on natural
language processing, Jeffery Ullman on word processing softwares, and
Peter Norvig on internet searching, just name a few. It's like an
introduction book on Physics with chapters written by Stephen Hawking
on astrophysics and Richard Feynman on quantum physics, for example.
Most articles indeed have the general public as target audience and
can be followed without previous knowledge in Computer Science. For
people majoring in computer science like me, the book forces me to ask
key fundamental question in general (what is computer science?) and in
specific areas (e.g., what drives information retrieval?), which I
didn't pay much attention when I studied this area.
The book also contains articles written by Gerald Jay Sussman (one of
the SICP authors) and Allen Newell. Their views are so interesting
that sometimes they are counter-intuitive. One of my favorite quote
from the book is "Computer Science is not a science, and its ultimate
significance has little to do with computers." Once you can
appreciate the quote, you really understand what computer science is.
Although the price of $35 is not really friendly to the "general
public", I highly recommended school libraries to buy one. Many
articles are very useful to motivate students in some undergraduate
computer science coerces.
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